10p049: All the Weirdness Fit to Print
Bury me at sea, Where no murdered ghost can haunt me, If I rock upon the waves, No corpse shall lie upon me
Rejoice, Tenebrous Cult! She has risen.
ITEM! Here’s Alex—back from the dead—with the weather
Hey ho, Tenebrites!
I’m here to tackle a really important question that popped up.
For those of you who don’t know, we’ve got an anonymous Google form set up where anyone can drop us notes! It’s been really wonderful and the responses have been so encouraging and sweet that we almost worry you’ve all been abducted by aliens.
There’s been a couple of great questions in there, and we try to answer them all on our socials (you can find the general thread HERE and the more specific question about our response timelines HERE) but there’s one that needs a closer look:
I get similar questions from clients all the time, and there’s a couple of layers of perspective that need to be added here.
For one thing, while publishing has always been brutal—and searching for agents doubly so—you’re all living and querying in what is decidedly a much, much worse timeline than anyone has ever had before. If you’re taking any advice on what your request/response rates should be from ten years ago, five years ago, or even three years ago, you’re going off entirely bogus information.
Fifteen years ago, if you had a good manuscript, you’d get requests. And most agents replied to queries. And receiving multiple form rejections was a sign there was something wrong with your query.
Right now, sixty submissions with one full request is barely a starting point. Agents no longer reply on time, if at all, and full requests are reserved for those manuscripts that make them feel pretty sure they’re sitting on a gold mine that will go viral and get adapted to netflix. Agents make less and less per sale, they work more jobs, they have less time. Your book is not the problem; the system is the problem.
All this isn’t to invalidate how awful it feels to get that many rejections; or worse, to get ghosted that many times. In our circles, where we compare the most brutal of notes, we see authors getting ignored, insulted, called out on social media for things like emailing after work hours. We see scam agents and editors, we see predatory contracts, we see writers getting those wins we all covet (they emailed to set a meeting!!! I got rep!!! I’m going on sub!!! I got requests!!!) only to have their dreams dashed in the end. Presses folding, professionals going out in burning balls of scandal. With all of this going on, it is perfectly valid to want to get off the ride long before you reach the end. You need no other reason than “it feels bad”.
But the specific question isn’t, “when should I stop actively querying agents”; it’s “when should I give up on this book”, and that’s entirely different.
Because that answer is never, never at all, not ever.
You can set boundaries and remove yourself from a situation that’s too unhealthy for you without ever giving up on your book, because your book doesn’t have an expiration date, and there’s always more than one way to get into a party—even one as exclusive and locked down as publishing.
You can pause your query efforts right now, recover, wait for different agents to open to queries & be promoted/hired, and try again then.
You can pause your query efforts with this book, write more books, query those, get represented, get sold, and bring out and update your back catalogue then, including this book.
You can shift your attention from querying agents to submitting to small presses, get several books published, get a fanbase, win some awards, get some buzz, and query agents when you’ve got a track record of making readers happy. Heck, after a couple of awards they may well be the ones reaching out to you.
You can shift your attention to learning the fine art of self-publishing and dedicating your efforts to pleasing readers, rather than pleasing agents. You can grow a readership, enjoy full control over your processes, try out all the weird and wacky things you’d never get to try elsewhere, enjoy writing, win some awards, have agents ask to represent you, and be the one to form reject them.
You can break the novel up and serialize it. You can publish some related short stories. You can quit writing, then come back to writing, then quit writing. You can try to write some related non-fiction. You can start a podcast, you can volunteer to assist in editing a litmag, you can run a critique group, you can meet people and make friends who will stand by you through all the times you quit writing.
The one thing you don’t need to do is give up on a manuscript based on nothing but the lack of open doors to trad publishing right now. There’s windows, chimneys, and all kinds of cracks, and lots of us are engaged in the happy and frustrating and exhausting and amazing pursuit of finding every single one of them.
So best of luck, and grab a screwdriver.
(Mattnote: I think she means the tool and not the vodka/OJ but you do you)
ITEM(s)! Gristly, Grisly, Grizzly Tenebrous Tidbits
Halil Karasu’s cover art for Joshua Hull’s MOUTH will be revealed January 10th, courtesy of our friends at Daily Dead; preorders for MOUTH open the same day.
SPLIT SCREAM DAY is Wednesday, January 17th here at 10p HQ, and we hope you’ll celebrate with us! Volumes 1-3 of SPLIT SCREAM will be re-released that day under Tenebrous proper, and editor/mastermind Alex Ebenstein will be opening submissions for the next volume, which tentatively releases in July. Stay tuned for more deets.
We forgot to mention this sooner, but Colin Hinckley’s THE BLACK LORD (which The Lineup selected as one of the twelve best Indie Horror books of 2023, along with Anthony Engebretson’s LUMBERJACK!) is being translated into Italian by excellent indie publisher Independent Legions. This is the first 10p title to be picked up for translation…but it won’t be the last. Congrats, Colin!
It’s not too late to subscribe to the 2024 10p Book Club (print or eBook options available)!
Get all eight titles listed above & save $$ on the price of ordering them individually.
Print subscribers will receive an exclusive shirt (tank or tee); eBook subscribers will still save themselves some cash.
ITEM! Enter the Thoughtscape
Shout-out for Friend of the Press, Matt Mair Lowery:
The best Sci-Fi anthology in comics is back, and the Kickstarter is live now!
Matt Mair Lowery began shepherding ThoughtScape Comics into existence right around the same time that Tenebrous launched—and he and I have been kicking around the Portland indie comics scene for more or less the same window of time—so I definitely feel a sense of kinship with this ongoing series that evokes the best of both Black Mirror and 2000AD.
Y’all, this is what quality Sci-Fi comics look like today. ThoughtScape remains a high water mark for diverse voices in speculative fiction. Support it if you can.
ITEM! Dead Rock Stars (boo…but yay?)
Bonus tracks for you! Start the year with something shimmery and seductive, and something searing and sinister…and they’re both the same band (plot twist!)
One of my biggest musical influences—Killing Joke guitarist Geordie Walker—passed from this mortal coil at the end of November.
Rather than get all somber and mourn this truly singular guitarist—and this endlessly influential and diverse band—I’d rather do one of my favorite things: hold a captive audience hostage and make them suffer through my record collection.
First in 1985:
And then 21 years later, when they were old enough to eat all of the mushrooms:
If you’re not familiar with Killing Joke, these two songs don’t even scratch the surface of their range. There’s an utterly engrossing documentary called The Death and Resurrection Show streaming free on Tubi and other places, that walks you through their exhaustive history; I highly recommend it.
ITEM! All outta items.
Well, 2023 is over. Alex and I pondered summing Tenebrous’ year up in some sort of listicle—we landed all the planes on time, and even threw in a couple unexpected helicopters! We got nommed for awards! Shit, we even won one!—but in the end, we both agreed that meeting in person for the first time at StokerCon in May kinda acted as the real first day.
To that end, we’ve decided we’ll be formally celebrating the Tenebrous New Year at StokerCon 2024. No, we don’t know what the hell that means exactly, but if you’re in San Diego, come find us and we’ll all figure it out together.
This will stop amusing me soon, I’m sure, but as of January 2nd I’m still tickled:
Hail the public domain.
In that spirit, I’m proud to unveil the new Tenebrous logo:
Happy New Year, Tenebrous Cult.
Hail Indie Publishing.
Hail the mouse New Weird Horror.
Alex & Matt